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The Man Who Fell To Earth #2
The novel has three main characters, the alien Thomas Newton, the scientist Nathan Bryce, and the housekeeper Betty Jo. How and if did these characters affect you? Did you feel for their situations? Did you understand and sympathize with them?
Comments
Newton's physical frailness and gentle character came through and made him rather sympathetic. I could certainly feel for his stress and loneliness.
Bryce seemed pretty down to earth. He wasn't some ethereal super-genius, like you often find in genre fiction. He was a decent person, trying to solve a puzzle. Once he found the solution, he reacted with compassion.
Betty Jo's place in the story was a bit less convincing for me. Why did Newton convalesce with her, rather than back to his existing house and his staff?
Overall, the main characters were all sympathetic. Even the spies at the end weren't xenophobes. They wanted to protect the interests of their government, but had no particular malice to Newton. That was a refreshing change: there was no real villain.
Early on I thought that the copyright lawyer Farnsworth was going to be a min character, but he seemed to fade out quite quickly. Otherwise I was convinced. With hindsight I do agree with @NeilNjae that Betty Jo seemed an odd choice, but suppose she acted as a mirror to Newton himself - a bit lost in society at large, prone to drink, and a good companion if you worked through that.
I agree with the role that Betty played in the book, and that was explicitly described as Newton getting a better understanding of the unpublicised part of society. But I think the way the character was included in the story was clumsy.
As an aside, the role of Betty brings up a question of the stories we tell ourselves. Even now, poor people don't have much of a presence or voice in mass media; the stories we tell ourselves hide the truth. Similarly, Newton spends almost the whole book hiding behind stories. Is that something to explore?
That's an aspect of the book that has a lot of contemporary resonance - several notable recent politicians have sort to appeal to these unpublicised parts of society, claiming that they are the "real" America / UK / wherever, in contrast to those who control social or traditional media.
It's an interesting question about Newton, and by extension Tevis as author - why choose to make an appearance on Earth in such a low key way and seek to build the rocket etc basically by stealth. Rather than just trotting along with the old "take me to your leader" line, I mean. From an author's point of view this opens up opportunities to tell a different story (as was said in a different thread, it's not an alien invasion story) - but what's the logic from Newton's or Anthea's perspective?
There's a naivety about the idea that he could just make shedloads of money and then build a rocket without attracting undue attention - as commented in the book by his interrogator, Newton's failure to consider that his conversations with Bryce might have been bugged shows that he really is not familiar with how things work on Earth. Which maybe is the point - if the Antheans had gained much of their picture of Earth from TV commercials and fictionalised serials, then perhaps they really would have a distorted picture of how things work.
It struck me that Thunderbirds, with its secret base and high tech programme which was jealously guarded by the Tracy family, came out in 1965, so maybe such ideas were floating around a lot back in the early 60s?
If Newton said to a Terrestrial leader, "I'll give you lots of tech if you build me a spaceship," there's a good chance things wouldn't go well for Newton. You could argue that the stealthy approach is more likely to succeed.
It could also be that they were constrained by what they were able to do. If you accept the premise that they could only send one person with almost no equipment, you don't have a lot of choices of how to get them to build a spaceship for you.
Now that's a crossover campaign if ever I heard one!
Hi, Sorry to be late. Was away visiting my mother.
I thought the story and all three characters were compelling. Thought it was a critical novel. It was interesting to for to think about how the story moved forward with almost no action once Newton had placed himself into Earth / American society. All three of the characters were dealt with when they had nothing to do - I thought the theme of the novel was struggling with leisure and its requirements for a communal self in an alienated individualistic society, and because there was nothing to do they declined: e.g. The three years that Nathan Bryce is happy because active pass in what 2 paragraphs? and We hear nothing of when Newton was a member of a community on Anthea.
Events /actions drive our protagonists together, but they have nothing to do, and so their lives collapse. Our male characters have completed their preparation for the life-tasks, but are dissatisfied with the lives those tasks construct because they cannot actually connect with others - Newton because he is actually different, Bryce because he is filled with contempt. I would have liked the character of Betty Jo to be better developed, but OTOH I think the story reflects the tenor of the times it was written in. We could generously read her character as a critique of the possibilities for women in general, and about the role of erotic / romantic love for the beloved.
I read the end as Newton cannot inhabit a community because truly individual and unique, which Betty Jo and Nathan construct a community for themselves with what they have, even though it's unfruitful. It's unclear whether that community can even be in any way expansive, e.g. can they even include Newton among them?
There's another theme of addiction and its role, which I'm still thinking about.
> Hi, Sorry to be late. Was away visiting my mother.
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> I thought the story and all three characters were compelling. Thought it was a critical novel. It was interesting to for to think about how the story moved forward with almost no action once Newton had placed himself into Earth / American society. All three of the characters were dealt with when they had nothing to do - I thought the theme of the novel was struggling with leisure and its requirements for a communal self in an alienated individualistic society, and because there was nothing to do they declined: e.g. The three years that Nathan Bryce is happy because active pass in what 2 paragraphs? and We hear nothing of when Newton was a member of a community on Anthea.
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That's a great point, especially as it pertains to Newton. On the one hand his planet is in dire straits and in that sense there's not a moment to lose... but a big engineering project is full of delays of months or years, so having set it in motion Newton is then doomed to twiddling his thumbs while stuff gets planned, developed, tested individually and in assemblies, qualified etc. So yes I agree there's a constant tension between what the actions he would like, and the passivity enforced by the process.
Thomas Newton was a compelling character, though I couldn't identify with him and his problems. I felt sorry for him, but he remained alien. Bryce and Betty Jo were much better insertions for me. I could see things from their viewpoints much more clearly. I suppose if I were an introvert instead of an extreme extrovert I could identify with Newton better.
That's why I liked him